Fig. 4.

Effects of VPA withdrawal on BDNF and Notch1 expression in the hippocampus

(a) GAPDH was used as a loading control. Western blotting was used to measure Notch1 (120 kDa) and BDNF (15 kDa) protein expression. (b) Notch1 expression showed a significant difference among groups (P<0.0001). There was no significant difference between the control and VPA-treated rats at 45 d after treatment (P>0.05). However, Notch1 levels in both time scales after treatment showed significantly lower expression than controls (^* P<0.05). (c) BDNF protein expression showed significant differences between groups (P<0.0001). Levels of BDNF in both the VPA-treated 10 d and VPA withdrawal 30 d groups revealed a significant decrease after treatment compared to controls (^* P<0.05), but not in the VPA withdrawal 45 d group (P>0.05). Data are expressed as mean±SEM (n=10)